Camera Angles
by Conviction
Summary: HP oneshots from a list of writing prompts. Both Marauder era and current character, plus some Black family action. Ranges from dramatic and angsty to the ridiculous and fluffy.
1. Chapter 1

001. Beginnings

Sirius stared out the window of 12 Grimauld Place at the pouring rain and bleary grey London weather through the crack left between the two thick black curtains that fell to the floor. How in hell had he ended up here?

The past few weeks, being around so many old, familiar faces… he'd spent a lot of time remembering. All the ones who were no longer with them, the hopes and lives that had been dashed and ground into the cold unforgiving asphalt of reality. Events rolled into each other, spinning off consequences, a war that never really ended.

So many years later, and they were still caught in the same old struggles. What had they all died for?

His eyes trailed to the tapestry that took up an imposing place along the wall to his right, a cynical sigh escaping his lips. His heritage, his…family. The word tasted bitter on his lips, filled with sickening formality, memories of stifling loyalties, and a wealth of pain.

The past was reduced to blurred events, half-glimpses and blurred feelings. Some details were razor sharp, others smeared to nothingness. Hesitantly, he reached out and ran his fingertips along the black, charred hole where his name had once been so proudly emblazoned. What were you supposed to feel when you were blasted out from your home, your name a word whispered in hate and disgust? He wasn't sure.

He sighed, his sharp shoulders sinking beneath robes that still hung loose around his body. He had always been lanky, but his current state made his previous body seem stocky, far more solid then he felt now.

Perhaps more despairing then any sadness or hurt was the nothingness, the complete and utter lack of feeling as he traced again and again over that place. It was foolish and he knew better, but for a moment he felt as though he had been erased from the face of the earth. He was invisible, empty, lost in the greys and the shadows of the cold stark room, standing in the broken heritage of his house.

He was the last.

No, not even that. Because there, on the tapestry, there was nothing. A blank space, a destroyed life.

X

"_Hi, what's your name?" _

_Confident eyes, a daring smirk, and messy black hair that would not stay in any sort of ordered state. In a word: trouble._

"_I'm Sirius Black," he shook the other boy's hand, sitting down across from him. He loosened his tie, slouching across the seat. His mother always had hated that habit, but she wasn't here to nag him anymore. "What's yours?"_

"_James Potter."_

_Potter. He had heard the name whispered among his parents friends. They were blood traitors, friends of half-bloods and mugglelovers. Not worthy of associating with. Flouting tradition and their own lineage. A disgrace to the lines of purebloods. _

_But James merely grinned at him and offered him a chocolate frog, and Sirius found himself smiling back as he took it. _

X

It was simple, an introduction. Life's great gnarls, it seemed, were spun from the subtlest of changes.

X

"_It's bad enough that you were sorted in with those muggle-lovers and mudbloods, now you're best friends with Potter and his scabby friends."_

_He stared up at Bellatrix, towering menacingly over him. It was midway through his first year, the last for her. And he realized suddenly that there was a gap between them, a chink where the pieces no longer matched up. He couldn't sympathize or understand her hate anymore._

_The thought both terrified and emboldened him as he straightened and looked her square in the eye. _

"_What will you mother and father think? They're going to hear about this sooner or later," she hissed, piercing gaze alight with that dangerous gleam that seemed too old for her years. _

"_That's my concern, Bella," he replied coldly._

_It occurred to him then, as he looked at her in the darkness of the cold hallway as night fell out beyond the walls, that he no longer applied himself only in terms of family and duty. His obligations and expectations had seemed suspended here in this haven from stuffy traditions._

X

Before he had known it, he began to form a division in his mind without being completely aware of it between himself and "them".

X

"_You know they're wrong, though, don't you?" Andromeda asked him, setting down her teacup. _

_Sirius stared down at his own muddled brew. He had never really liked tea all that much. "Yeah."_

_The ring glittered on her finger. He found it hard to not stare. Bellatrix's marriage had almost been easier—both because it had been exactly what he had expected of her and because the distance between them was now abysmal. But Andy… It had raged and roiled through his household. He was sick of treading careful lines, of the constant fights with his parents, of their threats and storming. "It's hard when it's your family, though."_

_Andromeda smiled fondly, though there were traces of an older, near motherly sadness in it. "Family is not only defined by blood, Sirius."_

X

Where did the end begin?

Life was not a series of starts and stops. It was circumstances bleeding into each other, cause and effect, action and reaction. Inescapable. He wondered, sometimes, what the slightest flicker of a difference could have affected. How his life might have been.

He had once been the heir of this legacy, now dismal and broken. Once the future had seem bright with promise and wealth and glory. He had known his place and been assured of his supremacy.

He remembered the grandeur of his parents and their glittering world as a child.

The power and thrill of magic when he first began his learning at Hogwarts.

Camaraderie and laughter amongst friends as they ran wild in their youth, unstoppable and full of their own glory.

Fear and the growing threats of war that crept around their school across their education.

Struggling to comfort Remus after a hard day.

Watching his family be shredded to pieces by their beliefs.

The terror and exhilaration when he stomped out across the threshold of 12 Grimauld Place with all his worldly possessions in tow.

He had lived through so much—how had it ended here? In this drab room with its empty grandeur, skeletal remains of a beauty and majesty that had withered in the grasp of time.

He asked this question silently to the imposing tapestry, and the splendid titles and generations upon generations of noble blood embroidered in fine detail stared back down at the last heir of the Black house, asking the same question.

X

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I love Sirius. Yay. 


	2. 002 Middles

002. Middles

It was a quandary of biblical proportions. A perplexing puzzle, a taunting question lingering on the horizon of discovery, toying with him. One that he knew he must answer in order to satisfy his own sense of contentment with the world at large. Sirius' eyes narrowed in careful, precise concentration, lips pursing together.

Was he too biased to make such a decision? Was his own fear or preconceptions distorting the reality of things? He wasn't sure. And this was certainly something he needed to be assured of.

Was he getting fat?

Sirius stared contemplatively in the mirror, studying the reflection carefully, turning this way and that. He poked. He prodded.

Damn, he still couldn't tell. He had always been a lanky boy, but as of late he was filled with an ominous fear that he was beginning to get a bit… pudgy. Just above his waistband, he could swear he was starting to fill out. But the longer he stared at his stomach, the less and less he could remember whether or not it had always looked that way or if this was some new arrangement.

He tapped the skin over his belly button, listening to the sound it made. He didn't know if it meant anything. The twacking sound filled him with no great sense of comfort, though it didn't sound particularly soggy, which was encouraging. He sucked in his gut, straightening his back, then let his breath out with a whoosh.

Nope, he was getting nowhere.

What he needed, he decided resolutely, was a second opinion. And possibly a third.

With a last determined look back over his shoulder at the mirror, Sirius trooped purposefully down to the common room. The only students there were James and Peter, playing chess in the corner and talking amidst themselves. Perfect. They would do smashingly.

"James, Peter, I need your opinion on a most important subject," he declared as he swung around the banister, gaining a bit of air and landing solidly on the floor with a rather loud thunk, announcing his entrance into the room boisterously.

"What is it n—" James broke off from his drawling question with a start as he happened to glance over at the new arrival. "Why haven't you got a shirt on?" He quirked an eyebrow at Sirius' bare chest.

Peter made an odd sound, the sort of noise one makes when a laugh gets caught in the vicinity of one's throat.

"Am I getting fat?" he demanded, craning his neck down to study his own stomach again.

James stared at him incredulously a moment, and then laughed.

Sirius' head snapped up, and he glared heatedly. "This is serious, Prongsie. Come on, tell me the truth."

Peter rose hurriedly. "I'm going to… go find…Remus. I had a question about our…assignment," he blurted in a rush, abandoning the game and edging around Sirius. "You leave that question up to James. He's definitely more knowledgeable. I mean, I'm not exactly one to go by." With that he rushed out of the room, raising his eyebrows and shrugging his shoulders at James from behind Sirius' back as soon as the other boy had turned his attention back to Potter.

"So?" Sirius asked.

It took everything in James not to laugh at the sight of his friend in the middle of the common room, with no shirt and a hand on his hip, demanding to know if he was getting out of shape. If he flicked his hair at the moment, it would kill James for sure. "Of course you're not fat, mate," he replied earnestly. Honestly, whether being addressed by a male or female was inconsequential. There was only one answer to that question. Ever.

"You sure?" Sirius still appeared dubious. He turned so that James could study his profile. "Even from the side?"

"Even from the side." James ruffled his hair in an attempt to keep from grinning. And failed.

Sirius was taking offense at the smirk dancing so obviously across his friend's face. "You're not really looking," he said, tone a bit injured.

James employed all of his years of bullshitting in order to pull off a somewhat earnest response. "Of course I am. We both know you're not fat."

"Not even slightly?"

"No."

Sirius sighed for a moment, and James dared to hope that perhaps his doubts and concerns would be assuaged.

He hoped in vain.

"But feel right here…" Sirius grabbed for James' hand, nearly pulling him out of his seat.

"Whoa, what are you doing?" James demanded, trying to snatch his hand back.

"No, I swear it's squishy right here!"

Tussling broke out between the two of them as Sirius tried to drag James closer to inspect, and James tried unsuccessfully to recoil in appropriate levels of manly horror. "Sirius, this really isn't necessary. Have one of the girls feel you up and tell you how hot you are, but leave me out of it."

"They won't give me an honest, man to man opinion. Now suck it up and tell me if my tummy is squishy, man!" Sirius demanded, jerking hard on James' arm.

"Fine!"

James was cursed.

There was really no other way to explain the horrendous twist of fate that occurred at that precise moment. It was cruel and unfair, and sheerly the product of some twisted higher power toying with his sanity. It was concrete proof that _someone _ was out to get him. For goodness sakes, a giant radioactive slug oozing out the roaring fire would, at that point, been more welcome then the events that followed.

Because, in accordance with every twisted law of inconvenience, at the exact instant that James' hand came in contact with the skin of Sirius' stomach as they stood in the cozy common room, the door opened to admit none other then one Lily Evans.

James did not have time even to register whether or not the texture beneath his hands did or did not, in fact, possess a squishy or solid nature. He flew away from Sirius roughly, looking in a terrified frenzy between the gaping Lily and the shirtless Sirius. He flashed back, all to sharply, to barely three seconds ago, three rushed breaths, three panicked moments, to their exact circumstances, trying madly to convince himself that they could not be construed in some disturbing manner.

Him. Sirius. Shirtless. Alone. Common room. Sirius grabbing his arms. Him touching Sirius' chest.

His head spun for a moment. Then he nearly laughed at the ridiculousness of it all. Oddly enough, his own humor didn't seem enough to stop his cheeks from flushing scarlet.

Lily, meanwhile, was moving back toward the door, mumbling some incoherent and irrelevant apology beneath his breath and averting her eyes.

"No, Lily, wait!" James protested, taking a step toward her. "It's not—we weren't—Sirius was just... asking me to check if he was fat."

He wondered if that sounded not only untrue, but decidedly pathetic to anyone else but him.

Lily, glanced back at the completely unfazed Sirius before ducking out of the room, her own cheeks tinged pink.

"What?" Sirius asked, shrugging his shoulders and staring with unconcerned eyes at the frustrated, angry, embarrassed James.

With a half-groan, half-growl of suppressed rage, James snatched a weighty pillow from the cough and flung it in the general direction of Sirius' face before bolting toward the common room door after the elusive redhead.

"Lily! Wait!"

Sirius caught the pillow and tossed it back onto the couch, sighing resignedly. So, it appeared his question wouldn't be answered after all. At least, not by James. It didn't seem wise to bring it up with him again. Next time he might not throw something as light and fluffy as a pillow. Something with more velocity and weight would not be welcome when aimed at his face.

Hmmm…. Maybe Moony would help him out.

He would need a shirt, though. He couldn't simply go traipsing down the halls in the middle of the evening in a half state of undress.

Or could he?

Was it specifically in the rules that one could not walk down to the library while bereft of a shirt? Sirius wasn't sure. He pondered it a moment, stalking across the floor a few times.

Well, he always had learned best by experience.

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second of a bunch of writing prompts... I already posted these separately on my account, but I wanted to add them all together in a single story so I could update without creating a new story every time.  



	3. 040 Sight

040. Sight

And there's something more to seeing the thestrals. To witness something ugly and a bit terrifying in life that others cannot see or feel. Something that you cannot fully understand through another persons descriptions. An innocence that cannot be reclaimed because you _see_ it now.

Something has been lost and broken, an innocence. The lenses through which the world is viewed have been altered. You can no longer view things as you once did. You have an added layer of perception brought on by the grief, and there is no going back.


End file.
